Secret to Kemba's success? His parents

Published 8:00 pm, Sunday, April 3, 2011

Rarely in the history of college basketball has a player carried his team through the postseason the way Kemba Walker has with the University of Connecticut.

You know the story by now. How after the Huskies limped to the end of the regular season 4-7 in their last 11 games, Walker put a team with nine freshmen and sophomores on his back and willed them to an unprecedented five wins in five days to capture the Big East Tournament.

And how after they were supposed to be exhausted and out of gas, he sparked them to five more wins in a row in the NCAA tournament to reach tonight’s national championship game.

It hasn’t been a one-man show, but it’s certainly been the ‘Kemba Show’ in college basketball the last four weeks.

So what’s been the key to the 6-foot-1 All-American’s game? Where do we begin?

His ability to create his own shot? His deadly crossover? His uncanny knack for finding an open teammate? His steal-you-blind defense?

Try all of the above.

But perhaps the biggest key in Kemba Walker’s makeup is his parents.

Paul and Andrea Walker have influenced their son’s life for the past 20 years, molding him into a leader not only on the court, but off of it as well. The TV cameras have shown them countless times cheering in the crowd throughout the Big East and NCAA tournaments.

What the cameras haven’t shown, however, is the foundation the Walkers provided Kemba and his siblings growing up and the fundamental philosophy to life which they passed on to their children. It’s all about helping others.

“The more you give, the more you receive,” Paul Walker, a pretty good basketball player himself growing up, said in a recent article in the New York Post. “Only in the next life do we receive what we deserve for real.”

Kemba’s father is from Antigua. His mother from St. Croix. He’s a carpenter. She’s a health-care worker. They live in modest two-bedroom apartment in the Soundview section of the Bronx, where Kemba was born.

It was because of their belief to help others in need that the parents met. Paul lived next door to Andrea’s mother on the island of Antigua and would always help his neighbor with her garden and carry her groceries and any other chores that needed to be done.

Andrea, who was raised in the Bronx, met her future husband while visiting her mother. When it came to helping others, she was cut from the same cloth.

Growing up, Kemba would often come home to find relatives of his or friends of his parents sleeping in his bed. He and his brother would just grab a blanket and sleep on the couch, sometimes for a few weeks. That’s just the way it was in the Walker home. Always caring and helping others.

It’s a trait Kemba developed in his own life. If any of his friends came to school with no lunch, he would give them the money to buy something to eat. If they needed school supplies, he would buy it for them. If he saw a homeless person on the street, he would help them.

His gifts aren’t always monetary, either. His father tells the story of how after UConn’s win over Louisville in the Big East championship game at Madison Square Garden, a young fan asked Kemba for a sneaker as a souvenir. Walker gladly obliged.

It’s just the way he was brought up. And it probably explains why throughout his remarkable run with the Huskies this postseason, Kemba Walker, the biggest story to come out of ‘March Madness’ in 20011, has continued to be humble.

He will be again tonight, no matter what happens. And the two people most responsible for his success will be in the crowd watching.